THE DREAM SMP!!!!!!

HIT MINECRAFT SERVER THE DREAM SMP!!!!!! it has. erm. a bit of a reputation now. BUT ITS SO VERY DEAR TO ME. i started watching december 2020 and it quickly became my Entire Life OKAY SO. if you didnt know. the dsmp was a mineraft roleplay server that was really popular in like 2020/2021. it started off just a normal survival server, and then it got improv roleplay and then later as it grew it got a more scripted! EVEN WITH THE SCRIPTED STUFF THOUGH it was mostly. people making stuff up on the spot with loads of differnt storylines and character arcs that sometimes went somewhere and sometimes did not. ALTHOUGH THERE WERE ALSO STREAMS most notibly to me quackity's lore streams which were. like fully produced movies. those were so cool

Important to mention. a lot of people in the dream smp, turned out to not be Wonderful People!! So when im talking about anyone. I'm specifically talking about the character (c!) and not the content creator (cc!). I think? the cc! thing actually started from dsmp actually (or at least popularised it) because people used to post stuff like TOMMY DIED or start yapping about some horrific shit c!dream did and people kept thinking it was Real. hence c! and cc!

I still do want to talk about the distinction between character and content creators first though because. as much as im talking about characters here, its very hard not to acknowledge how intertwined they are sometimes. the distiction between them very much varies from person to person. Some people had much more fleshed out characters and would do more heavy roleplay, and some would be much less involved. This is especially true in regards to dsmp, which started off not lore based and then grew into something else. I think also the distinction is hard due to it being a streamed series. one that ran for. a very long time!! so sometimes people would be very in character and sometimes they'd just be having fun making content.

I will say when lore Was Happening tm. it did get partically intense, and most people had characters with their own backstories and beliefs who experienced horrific trauma. And when i say horrific trauma IT OFTEN GOT VERY DARK. c!tommy please go to therapy... (he actually did thank you c!puffy). A lot of the time when there was gaps lore wise form the creators, the fans would take the characters and go wild with them, making them even more different from the content creator. This is seen more frequently in series such as the life series, which is intentionally much more gameplay based without much roleplay, and the fans take that and create so much stuff. ITS AWESOME!!!

slightly unrelated but I love when you had like. intense lore moments. that people put in their animatics. AND THEN IN TEH BACKGROUDN YOU CAN JUST HEAR STREAM ALERTS GOING OFF. ctommy is like... im so Sad and Alone. i dont know how much longer i have left.... THANK YOU LMANBERG4EVER FOR THE SUB!!!!!

ANYWAY ABOUT THE STORY ITSELF. each character had three "canon lives" so it wasn't like a hardcore server but if a death was deemed important to the story it might take one of their canon lives. When they lost all 3 they died and went to limbo and also sometimes came back as a ghost - usually a fucked up echo of their alive counterpart. FOR EXAMPLE ghostbur was the opposite of alivebur. he was very spacey, talking a certain way, trailing off mid sentence and forgetting most things. He couldn't remember any of aliveburs bad memories (which was most things towards the end of his life)

The main story was about this country called lmanburg which had several wars fought over it and got blown up multiple times (it was basically Hamilton. so much of it was based off hamilton) and also two discs (cat and mellohi) belonging to tommy were really important too. they symbolised his attatchments and also friendship with tubbo... love u clingyduo. ANYWAY TEHRES LIKE LMANBURG AND POGTOPIA (THE REVOLUTION), DOOMSDAY, THE DISC FINALE AND THE PRISON AND ALSO THE EGG STUFF (which was so underused) BUT ALSO LIKE. EVERYONE ELSES MORE INDIVIDUAL STUFF?? exile, the hotel, the syndicate, las nevardas, kinoko kingdom, the butcher army, snowchester and the nuke stuff IM JUST LISTING THINGS BUT THE POINT IT WAS SO BIG I COULD GO ON FOREVER.

SPECIAL SHOUTOUT TO TALES OF THE SMP THOUGH which was like a spinoff series? following c!karl who was a time traveller and they were like oneshot streams exploring either the far past or future of the dsmp. THEY WERE VERY WELL PRODUCED like who big maps and cutscenes and all sorts created for them.

The dsmp is so intresting in how u. had to be there to experince it IM SURE THERES PEOPLE WHO HAVE GOTTEN INTO IT NOW ITS OVER?? but. okay one. theyre missing out on the experince of waiting for lore and then having lore days and having to flick between 5 differnt streams at once to watch characters yell at eachother through differnt povs AND TWO. ITS SO MUCH CONTENT hours and hours of vods from like 30+ members. some of the lore just.. scattered in the middle. some of these streams like an hour long. some like 6. SOME PEOPLE STREAMING DAILY. i started watching at the beggining of exile AND I WAS OVERWHELMED CATCHING UP I HAVE NO IDEA HOW U WOULD DO IT NOW. its also impossible to watch a lot of streams cause UNLESS THE VOD WAS REUPLOADED A LOT OF IT IS JUST LOST!! FORVER!!! WHICH IS KIND OF WILD! most stuff with lore you can find clips of BUT THATS STILL LOTS LOST!! Theres so many other minecraft lore servers that this also applies to as well.

Another big thing is the fandom THE FANCONTENT LITERALLY CARRIED IT. The animatics, songs and fics, cosplays and fangames. they were all So Important. ALSO HOW THE COMMUNITY EFFECTED THE STORY. not just with story polls like the exile and election ones but like. headcanons being made canon. FOR EXAMPLE - c!quackity and c!tubbos scars and stuff. TECHNOS YOUTUBE CHAT WAS EVEN CANONISED - being voices he could here that pushed him towards violence (pretty sure he canonised that one MAYBEBEE on the first stream of his i saw???) his stupid sellout bell he'd just sit there and ring every like half an hour and he'd make all the other streamers join in SOMETIMES IN THE MIDDLE OF LORE it was so funny.

anyway WANT TO GIVE A BIG SHOUTOUT TO ALL THE DSMP FANFIC WRITERS. the post-exile bedrockbros ones are everything. the aus are actually crazy I HAVE READ SO MANY SUPERHERO ONES AND ROYALTY ONES AND HYBRID ONES AND SPACE ONES THEY ARE ACTUALLY THE WORLD. passerine is the one everyone knows AND FOR GOOD REASON BECAUSE ITS SO. im so grateful for passerines exsistance actaully cause it helped introduce more people and also ccs positively to fanfiction WHICH MEANS THE WORLD. aurghrh also Better Than A Fairy Tale by 阿呆Damelives IS MY FAVOURITE PASSERINE ANIMATIC EVER. and the papery watercolour artstyle definately influenced my some of my art.

THE FANDOM DEFIANTELY HAS A REPUTATION. for very wild behaviour and infighting. which yeah, i'm sure everyone being chronically online during lockdown influenced it, but also. I think much of it just has to do with just HOW BIG THE FANDOM WAS. I think viewership peaked on tommy's channel at 600k during the disc finale WHICH LIKE???

On top of this, all the different perspectives gave u a Wildly different experince depending on who you watched. LIKE silly example. jack vs tubbos nuke test/tommy assassination stream HAD SUCH DIFFERNT VIBES WAS SO FUNNY. or like watching the butcher army through like quackity vs techno. AND CAUSE OF HOW LONG EVERYTHING WAS. it was difficult to dedicate yourself to every character. so then u got like. character apologists and stuff (although how some people ended up as c!dream apologists i will Never Know... WERE THEY WATCHING THE SAME SERVER??????) erm anyway. love you forever c!tommy

One thing that does make me sad from it though is how I think sometimes the fans were more into it than the creators. and sometimes, especially after they'd like. make fun? of the fans? for being into it? or like be embarrassed by what they're doing, which was really sad for people who'd invested time in writing fics or making fanart and stuff. I DONT KNOW. I JUST THINK. IF YOURE DOING MINECRAFT ROLEPLAY COMMIT TO IT!!!!! its a story that meant a lot to a lot of people, although I know there's lots of tainted memories attached becayse of people involved. The treatment fanfic writers got especially still makes me so mad. Its only after getting into other minecraft spaces more recently that I can really see um. just how poorly managed it was at times. It grew uncontrollably quickly way to fast i fear. and storyline and plot wise it was not balnced very well at all.

SHOUTOUT TO THESE TWO VIDEO ESSAYS THE FIRST ONE MADE ME CRY!!!!! THEY BOTH GO OVER EVENTS AND EVERYTHING WAY BETETR THAN I EVER COULD!

Anyway im going to talk about The Egg now. OKAY SO THE EGG WAS LIKE THIS GINAT MIND CONTROLLING EGG and it like.. infected people and then they'd want to infect other people. There were all these red vines that started gradually taking over the server AND ALTHOUGH THE PEOPLE MOSTLY INVOLVED WITH i didnt watch frequently. i'd just watch the lore-y clips AND THE RED BANQUET that was cool ITS SUCH A FUN CONCEPT AND I WISH IT GOT EXPANDED ON MORE. like.. what was it gonna hatch into? was this ever answered. i can't remember

THE REASON I MENTION THIS is theres a fic called Rewind.pretty popular one that has actually the coolest worldbuilding ever AND I JUST. so its a c!tommy protege fic (THEO ILY) and also a time travel fic... so basically tommy and tubbo (now theo and toby) travel back 10 years from the future to the elections BECAUSE IN THE FUTURE THERE WAS A BIG APOCOLYSPE AND TEH EGG TOOK OVER EVERYTHING. i love how it expanded on the egg talking to people thing... And it went into like. certain different plants the egg created. like the flowers that explode when you hit them and stuff like that. they had to terraform the nether to get away from it and even that wasn't enough. and to get eveyrone to the nether toby had to unite the piglin factions so they could stay there.. (lmanburg was like. lots and lots of people not just the main server members was a whole nation) ITS SUCH A BIG FIC THIS PROABLY DOESNT MAKE MUCH SENSE BUT SO NORMAL OVER THIS FIC AS YOU CAN PROBABLY TELL.

Oh yeah theo and toby (future tommy and tubbo) FUCKING HATE EACHOTHER. well. okay no toby wants theo to come home and theo doesnt want to!! cant.. want to actually. he has a loyalty enchantment binding him to c!dream ERMMMM. protege fic. yeah that man is. Not Doing Well at like any point. BUT HE DOES HIS PART TO MAKE THE FUTURE BETTER TOO. hes so angsty its so funny love you theo

THIS ONE CMV OH MY GOD

THE AMOUNT OF COSPLAYS IT INCLUDES?? SOME FOR LIKE A SINGLE FRAME?? THE VOICES OVERLAYED TO THE SONG URGRHRH. especially i love with the absolutely Beautiful shot of c!eret in the church. and the shots near the end parelleling the past and present using like sun and fog.

Ive watched this thing so many times. i love it so much i had to make it it's own section.

ANIMATIONS AND ANIMATICS!!!!!

i'm now going to list some of my favourite dsmp animations and talk about them WHICH IS SO SO SO FUCKING DIFFICULT CAUSE THERES SO MANY AND IT'S GOING TO MAKE THIS PAGE SO SLOW but I'm gonna do my best (will finish writing about these Later)

FANSONGS!!!!

okay so this is one is also once again difficult BECAUSE THERES SO MANY. i literally have a spotify playlist with um currently. 223 FANSONGS THAT ARE MOSTLY DSMP (theres some other mcyt ones too) BUT THATS THERES MANY. shoutout to hit artists amanda fanagan, derivikat, kroh, kanaya, halfy and winks, precious jewel amor and ian has opinions

THERE ARE SO MANY MORE so made a playlist with my favourites (had to limit myself again there's so many i love) just click top right and pick one. JUST ONE. I PROMISE THEY ARE ALL SO SO SO SO GOOD. I HOPE YOU ENJOY!!!!

AWESOME ART CREATED BY

• @cloverbyte (tumblr) (the lovely ctommy page icon drawing)
• @chewingbun (reddit) (beautiful banner drawing)
• @scribblekinqq (tumblr)
• @maomango_doodle (twitter)
• @waddei (tumblr)
• @ezzy.b23 (instagram)
• @Public_Spam_Acc (twitter)